Relaxed and comfortable

Peter Hanlon

FOOTBALL has become a reckless race to pass judgment. This might worry a first-time coach who is charged with arresting what the gavel-thumpers have decreed is an inevitable decline. Yet if Brendan McCartney is feeling the weight of his assignment, he's not showing it.

''I'm excited for our club and our players,'' McCartney said yesterday. He flagged that at least one, perhaps two Western Bulldogs debutants would feature on Sunday against West Coast; that the coach can be added to the list of newbies doesn't interest him.

''No game of footy's about a coach or a group of coaches, it's about the players. It's something special for members and fans and supporters to go and watch, that's what we love about the game. It's not about us.''

Brendan McCartney is confident his students will present as a noticeably different group. Photo: Paul Rovere

Sunday marks a high point of McCartney's journey as a career teacher, which began in classrooms and moved smoothly and successfully into the tough school of AFL football clubs. Since realising when he went for the Port Adelaide job won by Matthew Primus that he genuinely wanted to be a senior coach, he has had no shortage of confidants - from Mark Thompson to wife Kirsty - assuring him he's made for it.

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Now that it's about to happen, his only concession to the knee-jerk nature of his new landscape was the observation that people ''look at the scoreboard a little bit'' when marking a team and coach's papers. ''A team can be three goals up and look like champions, and then be three goals down 20 minutes later and all of a sudden they're no good.''

He is confident his students will present as a noticeably different group, yet is aware of the variables at play.

''I've learnt that they want to improve, and they want to play a certain brand of footy that is good to watch but is also quite manly,'' McCartney said. ''They don't want to be playing a brand where people walk away going: 'There's no flair or attacking element'.''

''I think you'll see snippets,'' he said of how quickly the new Bulldogs would be apparent. ''What dictates it as much as anything is player confidence levels, and what the opposition do. Sometimes they're quite good at not letting you have what you want out there.''

The Bulldogs would love Ryan Griffen to play on Sunday, but a cracked finger has ruled him out. His absence, and the departure of Callan Ward, will likely clear a path for top draft pick Clay Smith, whose pre-season has been so impressive he might have barged his way in regardless.

''He plays like a seasoned player already - he's tough, he's hard, and that's exactly what we want,'' was captain Matthew Boyd's assessment of a young man in his mould.

Boyd acknowledged that all at Whitten Oval have been on a steep learning curve, that ''a lot of education process'' has gone into the pre-season. ''We've had to learn a new way to play.''

He has no concerns that that teaching might have fallen on deaf ears. ''We were implementing the game style in our first training session in October,'' Boyd said.

McCartney said Brian Lake would do more in Thursday's main session than yesterday, and absentee Ryan Hargrave would train and definitely play. They and others have benefited from the example set by Dale Morris, who did his first directional-change training yesterday since a late-season broken leg, and is on course to be playing football within weeks.

''He drove the group, and I think he brought two or three people with him, really showed them how to train and knuckle down,'' McCartney said of Morris.

His talls - Jordan Roughead, Ayce Cordy, Will Minson and Liam Jones - have impressed the coach enough to put them all in the running to tackle the Eagles.

''Just appreciating you can only do so much in a day,'' McCartney said of personal coaching lessons learned. ''And what you can't do you pick up the next day.''

2 comments so far

I'm a massive fan of Gloves, and it's great to hear of him starting some heavier training. I was shattered when he broke his leg last year. (it's just a pity that he doesnt get any supercoach points for regularly keeping his opponent to 3 ineffective disposals a game)

Looking forward to the harder-edged Bulldogs this year. Hopefully they can also incorporate some of that late-2000's flair into the hardball game as well.

Commenter

Chopt

Location

OutWest

Date and time

March 27, 2012, 10:05AM

"snippits'? Hey coach you beat Cameron for the job. I expect more than snippits. Also the rest of what you say is confusing or meaningless. Hey selection panel you somehow justfied your pay by seleting a ridiculous out of left field canidiate. He loves you of course. I went to the 64 grand final when i was 6. I remember it deeply. This year for the first time I want The Bulldogs to lose. What a ridiculous coaching appointment.